Paint

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." -Thomas Merton Whatever your creative outlets are -- music, painting, photography, drawing, or even writing, to name a few -- I hope you get to enjoy them frequently. There's nothing like engaging your imagination and creativity, although I have to admit that I speak of this only from my own anecdotal experience, not from any scientific knowledge that I have. That's part of why each weekend I give you a song to listen to; today I give you Josh Harty's unique Roots/Americana composition, Last Known Address. But this…
"Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?" -Pablo Picasso As an animal lover, like others here on scienceblogs, as well as a big fan of Halloween costumes, it's probably unsurprising that a good, creative animal costume will crack me up. Three more turtle dogs and a giant rat will complete the set! Turn your sweet, harmless puppy into the fearsome guardian of Hades by adding two extra heads! Sometimes, you just need to play to your strengths. In this case, it's ridiculous cuteness. Dressing animals like other animals is practically its own artform…
Well, not really. Artist Carel Brest van Kempen timelapsed stills of an acrylic painting to show his work process. It's remarkable how quickly the anole comes to life! I especially enjoy watching the glazes go on and come off - each time he blots out part of the painting, I think, "oh NO!" But that's because I work in watercolor, which is pretty near irreversible. Acrylic is much more forgiving.
Following up on my previous post about visual illusions, reader Jake alerted me to this story from the BBC: A design student made a battered old Skoda "disappear" by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park. Sara Watson, who is studying drawing at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan), took three weeks to transform the car's appearance. Note that like a trompe l'oeil painting in a building, or an anamorphic projection, the perspective work on the car will only allow it to "blend in" seamlessly when seen from a specific vantage point - which might be why we only have one…
Who hasn't walked to their car after getting groceries or the like and suddenly found a nice, large scratch where you're fairly sure there wasn't one before? Then you think do you spend $50 on some random infomercial product claiming to fix scratches of every color, get the thing repainted, or just live with it? In my case, of course, the third is the obvious option. What can I say? I'm cheap, and my car is instantly recognizable for its terrible paint job (let me tell you, black + Florida weather = bad idea). But what if my car's paint could fix itself? That would be worth dropping a huge…